Geography researcher Brent Else stands on top of iceberg rubble. He is wearing a full snowsuit, gloves and toque.

Energizing Arts

Faculty of Arts Strategic Plan 2017-22

Our students, faculty and staff are critical thinkers, engaged global citizens, collaborative partners, bold leaders and innovators, and creative practitioners.

The Faculty of Arts will be a dynamic hub of critical and creative research, teaching, learning, artistic expression and collaboration across and within disciplines. We seek to nurture talent, employ imagination and foster ambition to understand the world, assess our place in it, generate new ideas and modes of expression and help find solutions to the challenges facing the world.

Quality and impact

We will increase the quality and impact of Arts research and scholarship by fostering a culture of critical and creative inquiry, debate, imagination, discovery and entrepreneurial thinking. We will increase support for grants and scholarships for our faculty, postdoctoral scholars, students and academic units. We will showcase disciplinary and interdisciplinary research and enhance our physical and research creation infrastructure. We will ensure that Faculty of Arts scholarship reaches a diversity of audiences, responding to our various communities in innovative ways to share mutual expertise.

Meaningful opportunities

We will design and promote meaningful learning opportunities responsive to the most current scholarship on pedagogy. We will continue to support inquiry- and practice-based, experiential and collaborative learning in our academic programs and promote innovative and entrepreneurial, interdisciplinary and independent thinking. We will provide opportunities for students to engage in research and ensure that program outcomes speak to current expectations for post-secondary education in the Arts.

Promote and reward

We will promote, celebrate and reward teaching excellence and expertise. The Faculty of Arts will support innovations in teaching practices. We will recognize and reward quality, high-impact, pedagogically sound instruction.

Prepare

We will prepare our students for a variety of academic and non-academic careers. We will develop major maps, professional and one-year master’s programs, certificates and diplomas to facilitate student career options. We will expand ties with the community to fortify transferable skills and expand work-integrated learning opportunities to better prepare our students for future opportunities.

Samantha Thrift, Instructor in the Department of Communication, Media and Film talks about engaging her students in learning through digital story-telling.

Victoria Fast, assistant professor in Geography, talks about the smart city and improving the urban environment.

Petra Dolata, Associate Professor in the Department of History discusses revisiting the energy crisis of the 1970's.

Adam Murry, Assistant Professor of Psychology, is building the mental health component of a school reform project to improve student-teacher interactions and teacher-parent interactions to facilitate a healthier learning environment.